Map Mashup Gets Rockefeller Grant, Goes Open Source

Forget venture capital. The new hip funding source is to get a grant. That's what the company behind Walk Score did and as a result the mashup will go open source.

Walk Score shows you a map of what is nearby and calculates a Walk Score for any property. Buying a house in a walkable neighborhood is good for your health and good for the environment.

As part of the grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, a second site, walkscore.org will cover the collaborative elements of the project. The algorithm that determines walkability will also be made public. The grant specifically covers incorporating public transit, transportation cost, and greenhouse gas emission data into the score.

In addition to the score, the site shows associated points of interest on the map. According to the announcement post, the new data will make its way on the map:

Neighborhood data site EveryBlock had a similar progression. Its predecessor was a popular mashup. As part of a grant, EveryBlock agreed to open source the code that runs the site. Nevertheless, it found a buyer in MSNBC.

With these two examples, perhaps we're seeing that grants are a potential funding avenue for civic-minded startups?

About the author:Adam DuVander
-- Adam heads developer relations at Orchestrate, a database-as-a-service company. He's spent many years analyzing APIs and developer tools. Previously he worked at SendGrid, edited ProgrammableWeb and wrote for Wired and Webmonkey. Adam is also the author of mapping API cookbook Map Scripting 101.